Introduction

This is “What Just Happened?,” the podcast that looks at the biggest brand crises of our time, what they meant for organisational strategy and behaviour, and their lasting impact on our approach to crisis communication.

I’m Kate Hartley. And I’m Tamara Littleton. And together, we’ll delve into what happened, why it mattered, and whether it could happen again.

Episode

Tamara Littleton: Welcome back to What Just Happened, and Kate, what are we covering today?

Kate Hartley: So I wanted to talk about Evri today, the parcel delivery company, because it’s been reported over the weekend in The Guardian and various other news outlets that Evri is suing the BBC for £1.2 million over a documentary, a Panorama documentary the BBC did back in December 2025 and in that documentary it talked about poor delivery, unhappy customers, unhappy staff who were saying they could barely make minimum wage and so on, and the owners of Evri, which is a private equity firm, have said that’s caused some serious financial damage. So they’re now suing the BBC for £1.2 million.

TL: And that was a year ago. And yeah, I think we’ve got some opinions.

I think something that occurs to me is that in this sort of land of generative engine optimisation or GEO, this is quite an interesting thing to do because I’m going to be honest. I hadn’t actually heard of the documentary. I don’t know if you had until it kind of popped up again that they’re being that the BBC is being sued.

KH: I hadn’t either, and I do wonder whether suing them is kind of reigniting that media story. Now, I guess it depends, doesn’t it? Because if they have suffered losses, and obviously they’ll have to prove that I imagine.

But if they have suffered losses as a result, then it probably is the right thing to do because that documentary, you know, will have longevity. It’s now forced the BBC to put a notice on the documentary, which is still available on iPlayer, to say that it’s the you know there’s legal action against it. So I guess in you know if it’s caused them losses, then that’s obviously a problem, and they’re within well within their rights to do it, and probably should do it.

Particularly if the BBC has defamed them in some way or gone against the law, and that’s something for lawyers to discuss. Not me, obviously, but from a reputation point of view, I wonder because, as you said, I mean, sample of two, we hadn’t heard of the documentary. Maybe millions of people had, maybe more people had seen it originally than have now read the media coverage.

But there is a worry, isn’t there, that it’ll do that what we’ve talked about before on this podcast, the Streisand effect. And for as a reminder for listeners or viewers, the Streisand effect is when Barbara Streisand sued the state of California, basically, for taking photographs of the coastline that included her house, and before she sued, very few people had downloaded the photograph, and after she sued, about 400-and-something thousand people had downloaded the photographs. That kind of had this unintended effect.

So I wonder whether that will be the case here as well.

TL: It’s also I know this is off on a tangent now, but having a sort of PR crisis message named after you means that people are always going to be searching for those photos.

KH: I do think the Streisand effect sounds better than the Evri effect. I’m not sure people would understand what that meant, so maybe maybe that’ll be in their favour.

TL: But actually, you know, searching on Evri, what does come up very quickly if you do a sort of you know AI prompt on you know first impressions, for example, it does come back with the rebrand issues from 2022, where they got quite the roasting at the time for trying to distance themselves from the old brand, which was Hermes, which went through the sort of same reputational damage of being associated with you know missing parcels, bad delivery, and very much at that sort of local level as well, where I think they were trying to then distance themselves from that reputation.

But of course, by suing, it is it’s not going to take long for that to be the new what they’re being seen for.

KH: Yeah, and I worry sometimes that it’s then going to reinforce this issue in the public mind as well, that we’re suing because the documentary said we’re really bad. That might just associate every and documentary that says we’re really bad, and people might miss the point that actually this has cost them money because they’re not really bad. And it is, you know, this is such a personal experience.

And one of the things I always was fascinated by, and I was fascinated by it with Uber actually, and I guess it’s the same with every. Is that how we view brands really depends on our local experience of that brand, doesn’t it? So if you, you know, you might think a chain of shops is really bad, but if you really like the person in that shop, you’re going to have a better experience with the brand.

That’s where the brand is kind of delivered to you. And I never really rated every. Particularly, I just thought it was you know one of all these firms.

I once had a there’s a bit of an aside. I once had a parcel delivered not by every but by another firm, Yodel, and I was waiting for a case of wine and it didn’t arrive. And Yodel sent me a photograph of a letterbox and said they had posted the case of wine through the letterbox.

I mean, anyway, but that was another yeah that was that wasn’t every but you know you get those sort of stories so it really depends on how it’s how it’s local but our every driver is a really really lovely bloke he’s really nice he lives nearby he’s always really smiley he’s always really lovely he always delivers everything when he says he’s going to and with great care and so that has really changed my opinion of the brand which I think is quite interesting isn’t it that it’s how it’s these big brands. You can go, oh, it’s awful in principle, but actually, the bloke that delivers my parcels is really nice, and therefore it changes your impression of the brand.

TL: And there is a big difference between you know what people say and what they do. And we’ve talked about this before with things like you know Amazon. Even if people are sort of complaining about Amazon and for various different reasons, they’re still going to use it exactly.

And also with every, you know, I think they’re saying that it’s lost about that they haven’t won deals, so it’s not necessarily the public’s opinion, but it might be that they lost out on big contracts, for example. Again, as you said, every right to defend themselves on that, but I do wonder if the reputation teams, crisis teams, might have a bigger voice at the table where they’re starting to say to the lawyers, look, it’s just not worth going after them because the backlash is going to be so big, and the reputation and how we’re perceived from years from now might be more important than winning on a legal case.

KH: Yeah, it will be very interesting, I think, because if they’ve lost money as a result of that documentary, I guess it’ll depend what happens in court. Maybe this is something we’ll revisit. Are they going to say they’ve lost money because of claims that are not true, and, in which case, how are they going to prove those claims are not true?

If the BBC, you know, did its research properly and interviewed people who are, you know, that they’re covering their experience of it, I guess it depends what every cares about. If it doesn’t really matter in a way what the public think, we don’t as individuals send parcels via every. We don’t have any choice really over how we receive parcels either.

You know, it just comes with whoever was chosen as the courier. If they are losing deals, then that is a slightly different thing. They might then be able to go to their main customers and say, “Look, this was proven not to be true, and therefore that’s what matters.

So maybe public reputation in this case doesn’t matter as much as them being able to say we won this case, and so being able to go back and sign those deals with retailers again.

TL: And I guess yeah, people’s memories are short. People might not have seen that documentary, but just going back to AI, AI doesn’t forget.

KH: That’s very true.

Outro

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